“What?” she breathes.
The Dreamwright makes a soft sound and very tactfully looks away.
I drag a hand over my face. “Forget I said?—”
The ground cuts me off.
Not figuratively.
Literally.
The first shudder is small. A ripple through the stone like a muscle twitch.
Then another.
Then the floor under our feet bucks, hard enough that the basin of Ember dust tips and spills, glittering grains scattering like sparks.
Alina grabs the doorframe instinctively, eyes wide. “That’s not normal.”
“No,” I snarl, already moving. “It is not.”
We burst out of the Dreamwright’s chamber into chaos.
The air is thick with dust and shouted orders.
Children are crying.
A cart topples over in the square as a fresh fissure splits the ground beneath it.
The Central Node—my powers surge inside me.
“They’re hitting The Central Node! The SoulTakers are coming,” I growl.
“What is it?” Alina asks.
“It is the heart of the Rooted Marches’ ley lines, anchored beneath this very village,” I tell her, urging her along, not wasting a moment.
“Get everyone to the caves!” Varen shouts. “Move! Move!”
Another quake hits.
This one is not subtle.
The entire hillside groans.
I feel it deep in my bones—the sickening pull of a fracture trying to propagate, to tear through the bedrock and open a tear big enough to swallow the settlement whole.
For a moment, the world narrows to two things.
The cracking earth.
And the woman at my side.
“Oona,” I bark, catching her arm. “With me.”
She runs without argument.
We reach the center of the square as the largest fissure yet tears its way toward us, the ground splitting open with a deafening crack.
